Andrew Jones, A Man Who Carries His Heart In A Bag

Andrew Jones, A Man Who Carries His Heart In A Bag
Andrew Jones, A Man Who Carries His Heart In A Bag

Andrew Jones, from Conneticut, first became unwell in 2012 after struggling to breathe during a run.

He was horrified when two years later he started to cough up blood and developed a high fever.

Doctors diagnosed the Andrew Jones, at 26 years-old with cardiomyopathy, a congenital heart muscle illness, and he quickly became too weak to stand, move, or dress himself.

A few months later, doctors told him that if he didn’t have a transplant right now, he would die.

He was implanted with a pacemaker and an artificial heart because no organs were available, which he now carries around in a bag on his back.

Despite his near-death experience, he has returned to the gym and admitted that he cries after workouts because he is so grateful to be alive.

Iron man was never real, until Andrew Jones came along. His heart runs on electricity, stored in the form of a battery, in place of a beating heart.

He is waiting for a donor for a new heart made of bone and flesh, but in the meantime he is powered by chemical reactions in a battery, most likely caused by the accumulation of electrons within it.

To be more specific, it is known as an electrochemical reaction, which was discovered in 1799 by Italian physicist Count Alessandro Volta when he created a simple battery out of metal plates and paper.

Iteration after iteration, the battery began to power everything around us; now it mimics a beating heart; perhaps one day it will power our emotions as well.

He’s like a silent monster of an electric vehicle, like a Porsche or BMW. He’s so quiet, he doesn’t even have a pulse.

When he plugs in his phone at night, he also plugs in the batteries in his heart, which need to be charged as well.

Imagine waking up and your heart is out of battery? No good. So he makes sure he always has a spare just in case.

‘It’s something I would never want to wish upon my worst enemy,’ Mr Andrew Jones said, recalling his own experience with heart failure.

‘You can’t think, you can’t breathe, you can’t eat, and you can’t sleep. ‘Living with this disease put me in a pattern of depression and physical pain,’ he continued.

I had to take a break from work because I couldn’t stand for more than 10 minutes.’

I dreaded going to the kitchen because it meant climbing and descending my stairs.

‘I couldn’t even get dressed without panting and gasping for air – my life was falling apart and I just wanted relief.’

As hard as the process has been for him he has realized that at least for now this is his reality and he will make the best of it.

The lesson we take from Andrew Jones is that when life takes you down and breaks your heart, don’t just come back. Come back stronger.

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